Availability – Television and Internet for everyone - Niefinansowy Raport Polsatu za rok 2017

Availability – Television and Internet for everyone

"It is worth boasting about your leadership in the area of LTE. (…) Because there is no other European country with such a fierce competition in this respect."
Participant of the dialog session

Purchase of the set-top box and a satellite dish in the 1990’s was still quite expensive, and individual satellite equipment was very often perceived as an accessory of prestige. The offer of analog terrestrial television, with very few channels, dominated the landscape in rural areas and small towns.

The situation started changing at the turn of century. The offer of Cyfrowy Polsat – although the company started as the third player on the DTH market – debunked the myth of expensive and elite satellite TV reserved for well-to-do inhabitants. Satellite dishes bearing our logo appeared in thousands, and later millions of homes. Good and constantly expanding programming offer at the attractive price ensured a consistent growth of the customer base, in particular in smaller towns. Nowadays, watching satellite TV has become a standard which practically every Pole can afford. Each day, millions of Cyfrowy Polsat’s subscribers may watch one of over 180 Polish-speaking satellite TV channels and use additional content available on demand – under Home Movie Rental and online VOD Rental Service available on set-top boxes with Internet access.

- In 2017, Polsat TV celebrated its 25th anniversary.
- The first logo was designed by Jacek Błach, and music was composed by Grzegorz Ciechowski.
- In the beginning, the programming schedule in Polsat TV was limited to four hours per day: it consisted of a movie and a kid cartoon, and action movie was broadcast in the evening.
- First talk show in Poland was aired in Polsat – “Na każdy temat” (On every subject) appeared in 1993.
- In the summer of 1993, Polsat TV aired first commercials. Most of them were acquired under bartering arrangements with Polish companies.
- In September 1996, Polsat launched the most spectacular promotional action for viewers in the history of Polish television – the so-called “Polsat Club”. “Polsat Club” Passports turned out to be the biggest loyalty program at that time, reaching 13 million Polish households.
- Polsat TV was the first terrestrial television to acquire rights to the Hollywood blockbuster “Titanic”, shortly after its theatrical release.
- Polsat TV was the first commercial TV station in Poland to broadcast the largest football events – starting from the 2002 FIFA World Cap Korea/Japan, through the 2006 FIFA World Cap Germany, the 2008 UEFA European Championships Austria/Switzerland, the 2016 UEFA European Championships France.
- The intervention and journalistic programs are one of the most effective ones in Poland, e.g. thanks to “Państwo w Państwie” (State within a state) program ministries intervened in 110 presented cases, 25 cases were submitted for re-examination and based on our calculations, protagonists of the program unjustly spent over 74 years in detention centers and prisons.
- Sports editors offer over 500 broadcasts from various sport venues and disciplines per year.
- Polsat News is one of the leading news channels in Poland, in possession of a modern studio, a network of domestic and foreign correspondents and high performance technological equipment, including a helicopter.
- Today’s Polsat TV has nearly 30 television channels, most of them broadcast in HD quality.
- Cyfrowy Polsat has state-of-the-art Satellite Center located in Targówek in Warsaw. It consists of many integrated video, audio and IT systems. Thanks to this, the operator can constantly extend its offer with new channels and services, efficiently and seamlessly. The Satellite Center of Cyfrowy Polsat guarantees high quality of video and audio.
- The satellite signal has to travel over 100 thousand kilometers before reaching the viewer.
- In September 2017, Cyfrowy Polsat Group signed another long-term agreement with Eutelsat Communications for the lease of satellite transponders. Transponder is a part of the satellite responsible for receiving, transmitting and re-transmitting signal from the Earth and back. The new agreement extends the to-date lease and increases the capacity on HOTBIRD position by 33%, to be used by Cyfrowy Polsat and Polsat TV.
- The platform has its own set-top box production plant located in Mielec. The total production capacity of this plant is 2.5 million set-top boxes per year.
- The operator also has its own professional technical service of set-top boxes. Set-top boxes are devices consisting of a few hundred electronic elements. Top-class electronics specialists handle this equipment in Cyfrowy Polsat.
- Cyfrowy Polsat was the first DTH operator to offer a set-top box equipped with a hard drive. The latest set-top box offered by the DTH platform – EVOBOX PVR – allows for recording up to 3 programs simultaneously.
- In 2016 Plus celebrated its 20th anniversary. Throughout this time, the duration of the voice calls made by customers was nearly 211 billion minutes, which means that the total duration of outgoing calls was 400 286 years.
- SMS service introduced by Plus on 3 March 1997 was an absolute novelty, and a popular phone model at that time – Nokia 1610, did not even support text messaging. During the first nearly 20 years of Plus operations, the customers sent 185 billion SMS messages – it is as if they sent the entire 30-volume PWN Great Encyclopedia in …. 219 099 copies.
- From 2002 to 2016, Plus customers sent one billion MMS messages. If we compared it to delivering of traditional postcards, every postman in Poland would have to deliver 42 229 items more.
- In 2000, we were the pioneers of Mobile Internet access and the first network in Poland and one of the first networks in Europe to offer online services based on WAP technology. Nowadays, we provide LTE-Plus Advanced services with the data transfer rate reaching nearly 500 Mbps. Throughout 16 years, Plus customers transferred 452.7 PB of data. If we saved the transmitted data on CDs and made a tower out of them, its height would reach 833 km!
- The highest BTS⁶ of Plus is located at Kasprowy Wierch (1 987 meters above sea level). The lowest BTS is installed in a salt mine in Wieliczka (130 meters below the ground).
- IPLA was created in 2008 to support broadcasts from UEFA EURO 2008 Championship, the rights to which were acquired by Polsat TV. A small IT / editorial team was established at that time for execution of the project of broadcasting this sport event online. A simple Windows application, which broadcast live signal, and an official Euro 2008 Internet portal were the first products of the project. This year IPLA will celebrate its 10th anniversary.
- Broadcast of the boxing fight of the century Adamek vs. Gołota in October 2009 was the first major success of IPLA. Live streaming of this fight had the record-breaking viewership in the Polish Internet at that time – 30 thousand Internet users watched the decisive moments of this fight in IPLA.
- In order to accommodate the needs of people suffering from hearing loss or impairment, IPLA has developed subtitle accessibility and expanded its library of content with subtitles by adding new positions from the offer of Polsat TV, which are available on www.ipla.tv website. Currently, IPLA offers over 1000 items with subtitles, all marked with a special icon facilitating their identification, and this number will continue grow in the future.
- Currently IPLA is one of the most frequently downloaded VOD applications for mobile devices. The total number of application installations on Android, iOS and Windows Phone platforms has exceeded 10 million.
- According to Nielsen Audience Measurement survey conducted in December 2017, Polish Internet users ranked IPLA as the third most popular source of video content.
- Polsat Foundation was created in 1996 as the first media foundation after year 1989.
- From October 26 to December 28, 1997, a great contest organized by Polsat TV and Polsat Foundation took place, with the use of “Polsat Club” Passports which were accompanied by a postal order form for PLN 15. Individuals who paid the postal order and mailed its stub to the office’s address participated in draw of prizes funded by Polsat TV: Seat Cordoba and Mercedes C180 cars and the main prize was PLN 3 million! The amount of PLN 7 million collected from the postal orders was dedicated to the construction of a four floor building in the Children’s Health Center and bringing to Poland the family donor liver transplant program as well as to the purchase of medical equipment for four bone marrow transplant stations in the then newly established (in 1998) Division of Bone Marrow Transplantation in the Clinic of Hematology and Oncology in Lublin. The contest remains one of the largest ones in the history of media in Poland.

In 2011, three letters – LTE – have forever changed the way the Poles think about Internet access. That year Plus and Cyfrowy Polsat, as the first operators in Europe, offered fast, mobile and reliable access to LTE Internet on 1800 MHz frequency, ideal not only for big cities, but most of all for small towns and villages. The offer of Plus and Cyfrowy Polsat, ensuring network access and preventing digital divide, meant a revolution for a large section of society which so far had no chance to get fast Internet connection. Within the next few years the technology had been verified by the market, and LTE 1800, which was a novelty at that time, has become a standard for other operators. Plus has consistently developed this technology, to finally bring nearly 100% of Poles into its coverage, whereas as many as 54% of inhabitants in Poland can use the new LTE-Plus Advanced solution. Mobile data transmission with data transfer up to 498 Mbps means practically unlimited possibilities of using multimedia Internet resources.

Our goal is to ensure the maximum availability of our services, therefore we are there to help even in situations in which ordinary solutions do not work. LTE Plus Home Internet set, a unique market solution developed in-house, can considerably enhance the coverage area and signal power of the LTE Internet. The set consists of an outdoor LTE modem and an indoor WI-FI router. The modem can be easily mounted outside on the building (e.g. on the roof or balcony) and connected to the existing TV antenna installation (satellite or terrestrial one). The latest 300 LTE Home Internet set supports the LTE Plus Advanced technology and enables data transmission with maximum speed of even up to 300 Mbps during download.

Thanks to the unique combination of expertise of companies belonging to our Group we may develop and deliver to our customers programming content they expect, through diverse distribution channels using various technologies, so that they can use our services on any device, according to ever changing trends and needs.
Furthermore, our subsidiary Aero2 provides free Internet access with limited functional parameters (BDI offer⁷). BDI customers are also offered a possibility of purchasing additional data packs which give access to higher speed Internet access, without constraints regarding the Internet session duration. BDI packages are sold in prepaid model.

6 BTS - Base transceiver station
7 BDI means Free Internet Access

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